Are human impacts like a hammer and biological systems a nail?

What are the problems with this analogy? (brainstorm with a partner)

• Hammer strikes have different characteristics
  • Global change stressors can vary in magnitude, velocity, etc.

• Nails have different characteristics
  • Organisms vary in their vulnerability to global change stressors

• Also… the nail can influence the hammer
  • Living things can respond to global change stressors and affect the entire system

Organisms have different elements of “vulnerability”

• As human populations continue to rise, so do the pressures placed in natural systems

• How do biological systems respond to human impacts on planet Earth?

• Confronted with a changing world, what can organisms do?

• What we will consider in Unit II is: WHAT IS POSSIBLE?

• Theory proposes that biological systems are able to morph into more complex systems by making incremental, relatively less energy consuming changes in their make up
  • small steps rather than extreme jumps or more distant possibilities

• Kauffman was particularly interested in the origins of order and the mechanisms that drive self-organization, via evolution
  • how the actual expands into the adjacent possible

How the actual expands into the adjacent possible

• The actual describes the system in its current state, with all its components and interconnections

• The adjacent possible contains the set of possibilities available to individuals, communities, institutions, organisms, productive processes, etc., at a given point in time during their evolutions

In physical space -> move

In physiological / behavioral space -> adjust

In genetic / adaptive space -> adapt

If no adjacent possible -> die

Responses are not mutually exclusive

If environmental conditions are changing…
what are the adjacent possible options for survival?

• What determines the adjacent possible?
  • Organisms traits
    • developmental, physical, behavioral
  • Environmental features
  • Dynamics of change
  • etc.